


Because It Was He, Because It Was Me

by i_canz_kill_dragon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_canz_kill_dragon/pseuds/i_canz_kill_dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six times Merlin and Gwen definitely didn't fancy each other and one time they did</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because It Was He, Because It Was Me

_If I am pressed to say why I[loved him](http://quotations.about.com/od/lovequotes/a/I-Love-Him-Quotes.htm), I feel it can only be explained by replying: "Because it was he; because it was me."_

_-_ Montaigne

One  
  


Gwen didn't usually make friends with boys, yucky and sticky and mean as they were, but this one was different. 

On her first day of school, the teacher had shown everyone in the class to their desks and Gwen got stuck next to a boy. 

She had asked as politely as Daddy had shown her how if she could sit next to a girl instead, but the teacher had told her that nobody in the class got to pick their own desks and refused to move her. 

Daddy had told her it was rude to argue back, so she accepted as nicely as she could, and morosely made her way back to her seat.

But the boy – Merlin his name was – soon disabused her of the notion that only girls were nice. He was friendly, and he smiled widely and he didn't pull her hair or refuse to talk to her because she was a girl. Soon they were discussing their favourite cartoons and drawing each other pictures of their houses, with bright suns in the corner and flowers the size of trees in the gardens. 

After a few weeks, Gwen noticed that Merlin always put "Mum and me" on top of his drawings, just as she always put "Me and Eleeyen and my Dad" on hers. She asked him where his dad was, and he said he didn’t know, but his mum had told him not to worry about it because it wasn’t his fault.

Gwen was a little confused by this, so she sat in silence for awhile until something occurred to her.

“Hey!” she said. “You don’t have a dad and I don’t have a mum!”

Merlin caught on immediately.

“Our parents should get married!”

They agreed this was a splendid idea. Soon they were busy filling their lessons drawing pictures of Merlin, Gwen, Elyan and their parents all living in the same house, with even brighter suns and bigger flowers. They had to draw in class time, because Gwen didn’t get to spend her lunchtimes with Merlin, as she was supposed to sit with Lacey and her other girl friends.

But one day, Gwen took her lunch and went to sit by the big green plastic chairs where she and Lacey and the other girls usually sat and found that they weren't there. She looked around the playground all lunchtime trying to find them, twice refusing the temptation to simply go and sit with Merlin instead when she passed the monkey bars that he and the other boys usually monopolised at lunch. 

Finally giving up, she made her back to the classroom, thinking to wait in there until Mrs Handler returned for class, and found Lacey and the other standing around her desk giggling. 

Confused and alarmed she hurried over to find the contents of her desk strewn across the floor and Lacey holding all the pictures that she and Merlin had drawn of themselves if their parents ever married. 

"You're going to marry Merlin!" Lacey screeched triumphantly shaking the pictures at Gwen. "You're going to marry him and live in a big house with him with all your family! You love Merlin! You luuuuuurrve Merlin!"

"I don't!" Gwen cried, tears welling in her eyes. "I don't love Merlin!" 

"Gwen loves Merlin, Gwen loves Merlin!"

"I do not!" 

"Gwen and Merlin sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-"

"What's going on?" Mrs Handler walked into the room. 

The other girls all stopped what they were doing immediately and stepped away from Gwen's desk. 

"Gwen?" 

Unable to stop herself, Gwen broke down in sobs.

Mrs. Handler watched her sympathetically, patiently waiting for her to regain control.

"I d-don't love Merlin," she hiccuped finally. 

“I see,” Mrs. Handler said, looking from her to the other girls and Gwen’s pictures still clutched in Lacey’s hand.

After she had told all the other girls off for teasing, Mrs. Handler helped Gwen pick up all her things, whilst the other girls were made to empty the desk next to Hannah's. 

Gwen didn't look when the rest of the class filed in from lunch and Mrs. Handler explained to a confused Merlin that he would be sitting next to Chris from now on. 

They didn't speak again for the rest of Year One. 

Two  
  


In Year Two, Gwen's father told her and Elyan that they would have to begin attending After School Care until he came to pick them up at five o'clock, because he had a new job that meant he had to work later. 

Gwen nervously followed Elyan into the school hall that served as After School Care past 3pm. 

She and Elyan were taken by one of the supervisors and shown all the different activities they could do, from cooking to crafts to ball games, and then they were asked which of them they would like to join in with. 

Elyan quickly took off to join in a game of football happening outside, and after some hesitation, Gwen eventually decided to do some painting, and was led over to the craft table, where a group of kids of all different ages sat with a variety of paints and brushes. 

There was only free seat at the table left, and when Gwen looked to her left she discovered she was sitting next to Merlin. 

"Hello," he said cheerfully. 

Gwen felt a little awkward because she hadn't spoken to Merlin since she had been separated from him the previous year, but Merlin didn't seem to mind - he was deeply engrossed in experimentally mixing all the different paints together on his paper to see what colour they would make. 

"What are you going to do with that?" Gwen asked looking at the muddy brown paint on his page, deciding to be friendly because he had, after all, been very nice to talk to when she sat next to him last year.

In response, Merlin stuck his hand in the paint and looked around for a new sheet of paper, so Gwen gave him hers. She was impressed with his hand print he made but didn't like the colour, so she mixed up red and blue to make purple instead and did another one. Then Merlin came up with the idea to apply the paint straight to their hands instead of mixing it on a different sheet of paper, and they spent the rest of afternoon giggling as they painted every square inch of skin on each other that they could.

Merlin's mother was appalled to see him covered head to toe in paint when she came to pick him up, but Merlin waved cheerily to Gwen and said "see you tomorrow!" as he left, and Gwen felt happy for the rest of the evening. 

From then on they always spent their afternoons together at After School Care. Merlin's mum usually arrived to pick him up before Gwen's dad did, and she was always very nice to Gwen. Soon she asked her if she would like to come and play with Merlin on the weekend too, and after asking her father if it was alright, Gwen agreed. 

Thus they discovered that they lived quite close to each other, only a few blocks away, so their parents showed them how to ride their bicycles to each other's houses and Merlin quickly began coming over whenever he felt like it. 

It didn't take long however for Elyan to notice how much time Merlin and Gwen spent together outside of school.

They were playing in the dirt with some of Merlin's toy diggers, Gwen listening as Merlin explained the city they were building when a shadow fell over them and they looked up to see Elyan standing against the sun. 

"What are you building?" he asked meanly, "your future house?"

They looked at him in confusion.

"For when you get married," he clarified with a smirk. "You guys are in  _love._  You're going to have _sex_." 

Gwen didn't know what sex was but she understood the rest of it and she blushed deeply.

Merlin however appeared untroubled. 

"We're not going to get married," he said confidently. "My mum says boys and girls can be just friends."

"Your mum is wrong."

Merlin's face grew angry. 

"She is not!"

Elyan laughed and started making kissing noises, but Merlin grabbed the diggers and stood up, pulling Gwen up with him. 

"Boys and girls can be just friends!" he said with practised confidence, and he and Gwen stalked off to get Gwen's bike. They rode into the park and located a patch of mud there, which Merlin told her they were going to make into a shop. 

It wasn't the last time they were teased, but unlike the previous year, Gwen now had a weapon against it. Whenever Elyan or any of the other kids in After School Care would approach them to tease them about being in love, Gwen would say "boys and girls can be just friends!" and grab Merlin and leave. 

The other kids quickly grew bored of it, and left them alone. 

 _ Three _

_  
_They were in Year Six now, and going off to secondary school next year. Gwen was extremely nervous about it - she was anxious about starting at a new school and also about facing the fact that for the first time in almost six years, she might not be going to the same school as Merlin.

Gwen's father was sending her to Camelot High, the secondary school in the much larger village of Camelot over the hill from Ealdor, which Elyan had already been attending for two years. Camelot’s larger size and therefore greater resources had enticed Gwen’s father into enrolling Elyan and Gwen there, but Merlin's mother was considering sending him to the much smaller local school where most of the rest of the grade were going. 

Gwen was chewing her food anxiously and listening to Hannah and Megan talk about whether or not there would be any cute boys at Ealdor High - a topic Gwen was still not as keen on as her friends - when all of a sudden Will, one of the boys in Merlin's group was pushed face first and spluttering into Megan's food. 

"I'm sorry!" he apologised quickly, while the rest of his mates tittered. 

"He likes you!" Chris shouted out and soon everyone at the surrounding tables was laughing, including Will himself, though rather sheepishly. 

"Does he like Megan?" Gwen asked, walking over to where Merlin was standing at the edge of his friends, watching as they made a show of chasing Will and Megan around and pushing them into each other while they squealed and laughed in protest.

"Dunno," Merlin answered, laughing at Will's blush. "I think so."  

For all they had been seriously discussing secondary school and boys as though they were many years older than twelve only a few minutes before, Gwen and her friends quickly lost themselves in the joy of chasing Will and Megan around trying to push them together, until Sam White grew bored of their refusal to kiss and declare their love and started looking around for another pair to chase. 

"Merlin and Gwen!" he cried, spotting them laughing together in the corner. "They've  _always_  liked each other!"

"No we don't!" Gwen said hurriedly while Merlin laughed and prepared himself to run away. "We're just friends!" 

But Will snuck up behind her and pushed her towards Merlin with a shout of "tell him!" and the race was on. 

Merlin ducked and weaved and ran away from the boys while the girls quickly corralled around Gwen to prevent her from leaving. 

"Hurry up!" they laughed towards Sam and Chris, who were currently chasing Merlin into a corner. "Get him over here!"

Eventually, outnumbered and backed into a corner, Merlin found himself dragged laughing and protesting towards Gwen.

"No, seriously, we don't like each other - oof!" Gwen found herself pushed from behind by Megan (the hypocrite) and landed face first onto Merlin's chest. 

There was a collective "ooooohhhhhhh!" followed by a lot of giggling and one cheekily shouted "kiss!"

Gwen pulled herself off quickly to find Merlin blushing bright red but laughing, but before she could think too long on it, the bell rang and the crowd quickly dispersed to go to class. 

Four

Merlin's mother did send him to Camelot. 

Gwen was grateful as they were the only two students from Ealdor in their grade, and they clung to each other rather closely for the first few weeks, until Merlin approached Gwen one lunch and asked if his friend from Science, Lance Du Lac could join them as well. 

Gwen returned the favour a few days later by bringing over a girl from her Form Room that she had befriended named Morgana, and the four of them formed something of a group.

Gwen soon forgot her grief at being separated from Megan and Hannah in the joy of lunchtimes spent with Merlin and Lance following hare-brained schemes of Morgana's, like investigating if there was any truth to the rumour that the school was built on an ancient crypt or breaking into Miss Moon's classroom at lunch to draw a giant moon on the board. 

The other kids found their juvenile behaviour weird, but Morgana didn't mind; she fiercely detested most of them, especially her adoptive brother Arthur Pendragon, whom Gwen didn't have any classes with and therefore had yet to meet. 

Gwen was procrastinating from her Maths homework at Merlin's house a month later when she got a call from Morgana.

"I hate Arthur," Morgana said without preamble as soon as Gwen answered her phone. Gwen groaned and apologised to Merlin and dragged herself up off the floor.

"What are you doing?" Morgana asked. 

"Playing Jak and Daxter with Merlin," she replied.

"What's that?"

"Playstation game," she said.

"Oh," Morgana said, followed by a long pause, in which Gwen could practically hear the wheels in her head turning. 

"Do you always do that?" she asked finally.

"Yeah," Gwen sighed, "we live close to each other. Plus we've known each other for ages. So it’s not a big deal."

"Right," Morgana said. "I mean, yeah, I knew you guys were friends in primary school and stuff."

"Right," Gwen agreed, waiting for it. 

"But do you like.......I mean, you're always with him."

"So?"

"So do you like him?"

"No," Gwen said firmly, "I don't. We're just friends."

"Ok," Morgana said, sounding unconvinced. "Sorry. Well, anyway, let me tell you about Arthur...."

Gwen listened patiently as Morgana ranted on about her stupid brother and his jock friends while Merlin, realising Gwen might be awhile, paused the game and got up to raid the fridge instead.

Five

It couldn't really be called a party, with only the four of them there. Morgana fiercely hated the "TG's" as she called them, short for ‘Too Goods’ ("cause they think they're top shit"), much to Merlin’s ongoing quiet irritation, and subsequently hadn’t invited anyone else to her fifteenth birthday.

It was Merlin and Lance’s first time at Morgana's house, though Gwen had been here before – Morgana preferred meeting up at their houses, usually Gwen’s, to get away from Arthur and Uther.

“Wow,” Merlin said, taking it in. Gwen remembered her first time at the Pendragon mansion and had to agree. The crystal chandelier in the entrance hall was especially overwhelming.

“Hey!” Morgana said, coming down the stairs (Merlin and Lance both jumped, and immediately looked guilty – Gwen suspected they felt like they were ruining the house just being there).

“We’re in the kitchen,” Morgana said, leading them through a left hand door.

The kitchen was a spacious affair with stone flooring, a huge open fireplace, glimmering modern fittings and Arthur, sitting on the bench eating an apple.

He nodded once at Gwen, Merlin and Lance and they all nodded politely back.

“Hey!” Morgana said, “I have the kitchen!”

Arthur rolled his eyes but left without a fuss.

“K,” she said, going over the fridge, “Uther left us all this food, and also –“ she pulled it out and shook in front of them with a grin “ – a bottle of champagne.”

Merlin bit his tongue and Gwen could see him restraining himself from asking why Uther was so bad if he bought her champagne for her birthday, but Morgana didn’t appear to notice.

She poured them all a glass and told them to help themselves to the cheese while she ran off to the toilet.

As soon as she left, Arthur returned, striding in and managing to look contrite and irritated at the same time.

“Is she gone?” he asked the room at large.

Gwen and Lance looked away awkwardly, but Merlin faced him with open curiosity.

“Yeah,” he replied, “to the toilet”

“Thank god,” Arthur said. “Wench wouldn’t even let me grab some food.”

He began piling a plate with food from the fridge.

“Think some of that’s for Morgana’s, you know, thing,” Merlin said.

“Think it’s my house and I can eat what I want,” Arthur retorted.

“Hey I’m just saying,” Merlin said, shrugging and spreading his arms with his palms out.

Arthur looked him up and down.

“What’s your name again?” he asked.

“Um, Merlin,” Merlin replied.

“I’m Arthur”

“I know,” Merlin said with a small laugh at him. Gwen expected Arthur to snap at him again, but to her surprise, he gave Merlin a fleeting grin before he quickly grew serious again.

“So what do you – “

But Morgana could be heard returning from the toilet, so Arthur grabbed his plate and left with another roll of his eyes.

“Hey!” she greeted them happily, entering the kitchen once more. “Grab this stuff and we’ll take it up to my room.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon with Morgana’s stereo blasting, drinking champagne and pretending to feel more of its effects than they really could. Merlin got up to take the empty bottle downstairs, leaving Gwen, Lance and Morgana alone to decide on what movie they wanted to watch.

They were a quarter of the way through Zombieland when Morgana nudged Gwen.

“Go get Merlin, he’s been forever.”

“Yeah alright,” Gwen said getting up with a sigh.

It didn’t take long to find him. He was at the foot of the stairs engrossed in conversation with Arthur.

She slowed her steps and descended more quietly, stopping where the staircase sweeped off to the left and peering down at the boys where they standing below her and couldn’t see.

Arthur had his phone out and was on facebook.

“E-M-R-Y-S,” Merlin was saying, watching Arthur enter his name into the search bar.

“Cool,” Arthur said, once he had added him.

Gwen started her descent down the stairs again, loud enough that they would be able to hear her.

“Well, I’ll see you in History on Monday then,” Arthur said, seeing her approach them.

“Yeah, cool,” Merlin replied with a grin.

Gwen waited till Arthur had left and they were climbing back to Morgana’s room to hand Merlin her phone.

“Better set that friend announcement so that only Arthur can see it,” she said, “or Morgana will flip if she sees you're friends with him.”

“I’m not friends with him,” Merlin retorted. “It’s just, he’s not that bad.”

Gwen didn’t say anything.

Nor did she say anything when she saw Merlin speaking to Arthur between classes the following week, nor when he dragged them both to sit with Arthur in History the week after and nor, the week after that, when she rang him one afternoon and he told her he couldn’t talk because Arthur was over.

“You’re going to piss off Morgana if you keep hanging out with Arthur,” Gwen told him as she fixed his english homework one day (he had a habit of writing long, rambly sentences that needed constant editing).

“It won’t be that bad. He’s her brother,” Merlin replied, chewing a pen as he corrected her science homework.

“He’s only her adopted brother. And she doesn’t think of him like that. I think she really and truly hates him.”

“Why? He doesn’t really and truly hate her. He’s not even a bad guy. It’s just all Morgana’s bullshit about,” he put on a high pitched voice to imitate her, “the Teeeeee Geeeee’s! Honestly, if they do have a problem with her it’s only cause she’s so hostile to them.”

Merlin had already covered every aspect of why Morgana’s somewhat anti-social attitude was annoying several times in the past, so Gwen ignored him to focus on the real problem.

“I’m just saying, if she finds out your friends with him, she’s going to hate you too.”

Merlin put down his pen to look at her.

“I’m sick of walking on eggshells cause of Morgana’s moods! I’m not going to let Morgana _control_ me just cause she has issues with people who never did anything to her except be cool when she’s not.”

Gwen knew better than to press him. He was rarely unhappy, cheerfulness being his default state of being, but he had a love of complaining it could be hell to provoke.

Picking up her pen, she resumed her editing and hoped everything would sort itself out.

***

It didn’t. In fact it got worse that very night.

“Why is Merlin friends with Arthur on facebook?” Morgana hissed over the phone.

Gwen sighed.

“Just, you know, they know each other.”

“They only know each other through me!”

“So?”

“Well you and Lance don’t have him on facebook,” Morgana said. “You know him through me.”

“Look,” Gwen said, awkwardly trying to keep the peace. “They just, they talk sometimes, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” Morgana said. “It’s disloyal!”

She went on a long rant about Arthur, and how she couldn’t _believe_ that he had so many friends or that Merlin could possibly want to talk to him and hadn’t she told Merlin all about how much she hated Arthur for _years?_ What was wrong with him anyway?

Gwen kept largely silent, responding only with “mmmmm’s” and “yeah’s” when Morgana paused for breath.

***

Unfortunately, Morgana was not the type simply to vent her feelings through a good bitch session and move on.

As soon as the four of them had sat at their usual table, she started on Merlin.

“So, are you friends with Arthur?”

Merlin looked up in surprise to meet Morgana’s angry glare. Lance shifted awkwardly next to him, but Merlin’s face was closing like a steel trap and Gwen knew, that after months of irritation with Morgana, he was not going to back down.

“Yeah,” he said coolly.

“Why?” she asked angrily.

“Dunno,” he replied, in a low voice, “we just get along.”

“It’s disloyal,” she said, with a gaze that would freeze even ice itself.

Merlin squared his shoulders.

“It’s not,” he said. “He’s your brother. Not your ex or your worst enemy or something.”

“He isn’t,” she said fiercely, “I’m adopted.”

“He’s still your brother though. Uther raised you.”

“He isn’t!” she shouted – other kids were turning around to stare, and Gwen and Lance ducked their heads in embarrassment and fiddled with the food on their plates. “The only reason I live with them is cause my real parents are dead.”

“And my dad walked out on us when I was little and Gwen’s mum died in childbirth,” Merlin replied, “get over it Morgana.”

There was a shocked silence.

Merlin kicked his chair out and walked away.

***

That night it was Merlin ranting in Gwen’s ear on the phone.

“She’s _crazy,_ ” he was saying, “she’s legit crazy. Uther and Arthur have _never_ done a damn thing to her except raise her! Like, Uther’s a dick, but so what everyone’s dad’s a dick. She just wants to be _special._ Like isolating herself from everyone but you and me and Lance, I swear she does it on purpose just so she can go on about being different.”

“Merlin,” Gwen tried. “I know she can be a bit full on – “

“Full on?!” Merlin said, “fuck, I’m only hanging out with _her brother,_ we all know that in a few years she’ll get over her shit with him anyway and be friends and it’ll probably be thanks to me!”

“Right,” Gwen said, cutting him off before he could start again. “But, could you maybe just, not hang out with Arthur for a bit till I dunno, we convince her he’s alright or something….”

Gwen trailed off and Merlin sighed in disbelief.

“I don’t want Morgana to decide who I can and can’t hang out with!”

Gwen exhaled heavily. She agreed with Merlin that Morgana was over the top and unjustified in her views on Arthur, from what she had seen of him, but she also knew Morgana would never back down. If they were going to make it up, it had to come from Merlin.

“Merlin,” she said a little pleadingly.

“I like Arthur,” Merlin said with finality.

 _And I’m sick of Morgana,_ Gwen heard.

“Hang on, I’m getting a text,” Gwen said, as the noise came through. She hung up, and looked at it.

 _Just sent Merlin a text,_ Morgana said, with what Gwen thought was a rather smug looking smiley face.

Gwen didn’t want to know what it said. Suddenly not in the mood to deal with the situation anymore she turned her phone off, and went to watch television with her dad.

***

Nobody had classes with Merlin the next day. At lunch, they waited for him to arrive, Morgana looking especially eager ( _probably for a fight,_ Gwen thought bitterly) but he never came.

Eventually, at the end of the hour, Morgana grabbed Gwen and left the table on the excuse of needed someone to accompany her to the toilet.

They went out of their way to go to the ones on the other side of the school, passing especially by the gymnasium, and there, sitting with Arthur, Gwaine, Percival, Owain, Sefa and Elena, was Merlin.

Gwen knew as soon as look at Morgana’s face that it was over.

 ***

Gwen didn’t know where Merlin’s decision to leave the group left her in his books. She spent the rest of the afternoon anxiously considering the idea that they might not see each other much anymore until she almost made herself sick with it, eventually desperate enough for distraction to watch The Bold and the Beautiful, until there came a knock at the door.

“Hey,” Merlin said, looking sheepish.

“Hi,” she said shortly, unable to behave as warmly as usual toward the source of that afternoon’s anxiety.

“Can I come in?” he asked awkwardly.

“Sure.”

He sat down on her Dad’s armchair while she went to the kitchen to pour some crisps into a bowl.

“So are you just going to sit with Arthur from now on?” she asked bluntly, putting the bowl down rather harder than she needed to.

“I think so,” he answered awkwardly.

She looked at him, and he sighed.

“Look,” he said. “I promise, it’s not you. Or Lance. It’s Morgana. She drives me crazy. And I don’t think she likes me anymore either. We just.....I don’t really want to be friends with her again, even if we did get over this whole Arthur fight.”

Gwen nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to ask the question that had been plaguing her all afternoon. _Are we still going to be friends though?_ She didn’t think she could speak through the lump in her chest.

“But,” he said sincerely, holding her gaze: “I just came over here to say, I mean to make sure....you’re my best friend Gwen. You always have been, since we were six. And we used to be in different groups in primary school and it was fine. So I just came over to make sure, you know...we’ll always hang out and stuff. No matter what.”

He ducked his head and fiddled with his watch for a second, and to Gwen’s horror, she felt the lump in her chest rise to her throat and escape as tears.

She sniffed and he looked up in surprise.

“Of course,” she said, feeling stupid. “Of course....you’re my best friend too and....” she blushed suddenly for some reason she couldn’t name. “Yeah you know, no matter what.”

It wasn’t a very eloquent sentence and it didn’t even begin to hint at everything Gwen was trying to say, and maybe anyone else would have been confused, but Merlin understood.

His face broke into a blinding grin.

“Excellent,” he said. “We going to eat these crisps then or what?”

She laughed, and then squealed as he unexpectedly reached up and pulled her down into the squashy armchair with him, laughing at her as she fidgeted around trying to get comfortable in the small space.

He reached over for the bowl of crisps and placed it on their lap and they spent the afternoon watching re-runs of Seinfeld, Gwen feeling warm and contended pressed comfortably into Merlin’s side.

***

Morgana was stony and thunderous the following day, and her bad mood did not ease for the rest of the week. Gwen and Lance sat in increasingly uncomfortable silence, Gwen painfully aware of how much Lance had always felt closest to Merlin, a fact not lost on Morgana either, judging by the glares she kept sending him.

Gwen wanted to tell her she risked estranging Lance as well as Merlin, but Morgana bitched to her so often about Merlin’s lack of loyalty that Gwen was afraid to bring it up.

She wasn’t quite sure where she stood in Morgana’s mind either; on the one hand, she had always been Morgana’s closest friend, on the other, it was clear her own best friend was Merlin.

Sometimes she thought Morgana seemed cooler towards her, whilst other times she wondered if all the anxiety within the group was making her paranoid.

Lance meanwhile grew more and more uneasy by the day, as Morgana grew colder and colder toward him until one day, walking to English, Lance burst out with, “Christ she doesn’t make it any easier.”

He didn’t add anything further, and Gwen didn’t push him; Lance was famously reticent about expressing any negative opinions about anybody. He didn’t need to elaborate however. The following day, she saw him sat between Merlin and Gwaine at lunch on her way to over to sit with Morgana.

She walked to their usual table with a sinking feeling, expecting to find her upset and even angrier than usual, but to her surprise, she found Morgana happily in conversation with a blonde girl she hadn’t seen before.

“Gwen,” Morgana said cheerfully. “This is Morgause. She’s new.”

“Oh,” Gwen said, putting her tray carefully down on the table. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Morgause said solemnly.

Morgause was serious, quietly spoken, but intensely passionate on every apparently every topic.

Gwen soon grew exhausted with the way Morgause spoke so fiercely she began a semi-debate about everything from the merits of the current school system of the United Kingdom to which apples were the tastiest, but Morgana drank in her every word.

“She’s great isn’t she?” Morgana said to her as soon as the bell rang and they began walking to class.

Gwen smiled without feeling.

***

Morgause didn’t go away. She was there again the next day, and for all the rest of the week.

“ – and the worst bit is, Morgana gets even worse when she’s around her,” Gwen sighed, leaning against Merlin's locker.She often visited him there for the first fifteen minutes of lunch, more so now Morgause had shown up.

“Didn’t think that was possible,” Merlin teased with a huge grin on his face, laughing as Gwen swatted his arm.

“Oh shut up. How’s Arthur anyway? Taught you how to be a footballer and pick up all the girls?”

“Well I’m definitely getting all the girls these days,” Merlin said, puffing up with mock pride. “Who can resist this face?”

Gwen scrutinised it.

“I dunno, I wouldn’t want to kiss that face. It’s a safety hazard. If you missed you’d cut yourself.”

“Oi!” Merlin laughed, but Gwen’s smile faded, seeing Morgause walk past behind Merlin, and stop.

“Coming Gwen?” she asked pointedly.

Merlin raised an eyebrow at Gwen where Morgause couldn’t see.

“Oh,” Gwen sighed. “Yes.”

“Do you still see a lot of Merlin Gwen?” Morgause asked politely as soon as they had sat down with Morgana.

Morgana looked at her.

“Well, yeah,” Gwen said awkwardly. “We’ve known each other since we were little.”

“I see,” Morgause said.

Gwen fumed inwardly at any implication that she should not be friends with Merlin simply because he and Morgana had busted up. She looked towards Morgana but Morgana just ducked her head awkwardly.

Resentful at Morgana’s refusal to correct Morgause with regards to Gwen’s continuing friendship with Merlin, Gwen ate the rest of the rest of her lunch in sullen silence.

***

Gwen knew she couldn’t talk about this to Merlin and she also knew it would be better to tackle the problem head on rather than let it fester until it became unbearable, as had happened with Lance.

So she cornered Morgana after school.

“What Morgause said today,” Gwen started, “about me and Merlin. You don’t have a problem with that do you?”

Morgana faltered somewhat.

“No,” she replied carefully, “I know you were friends with him first and that’s fine.”

For the first time since Merlin and Morgana had come to loggerheads, Gwen felt herself growing angry with Morgana.

“Good,” she said, surprising herself with the strength of her voice. “Because we were.”

Morgana looked Gwen up and down, with a strange, unreadable look on her face.

“I know,” she said finally, “I just said that.”

***

The following day, Morgana and Morgause were huddled close together at the table, talking in whispers.

Gwen slammed her tray of food down, spraying bits of carrot everywhere and they quickly stopped.

Gwen was so angry for the rest of the day that she had barely put her bag down when she got home before she was recklessly calling Morgana.

“You were bitching about me with Morgause,” she said without preamble, a vague part of her mind wondering what had got into her.

“I was not,” Morgana denied immediately, confirming Gwen’s suspicions.

“Yes you were! You stopped talking as soon as I came over!”

“We were talking about something else.”

“Oh yeah? Like what? What could you possibly be talking about that you can’t tell me?”

“Lots of things! Look, you don’t seem to like Morgause that much and she knows that so there’s lots of things she only talks to me about!”

“I bet,” Gwen said.

“You’re jealous of her,” Morgana said. “Cause we’re such good friends.”

“Why would I be jealous of her?” Gwen said, the same strange confrontational feeling rising in her again. She wasn’t argumentative by nature, but there came some occasions where she simply knew she was right, and a battle had to be fought. “I have plenty of other friends.”

“What, like Merlin?” Morgana sneered.

“You have a problem with me being friends with Merlin,” Gwen stated matter of factly.

“No!” Morgana shouted, but her tone wavered, exposing the lie.

Gwen felt fury rising like bile in the throat.

“I should just choose you over him because you had a fight?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You didn’t have to!”

“Why would I say something like that?” Morgana asked, voice shaking. “That would just be idiotic on my part to make you choose wouldn’t it? Everyone knows you would choose Merlin over me! You’ve fancied him since you were six!”

“I have not!” Gwen protested, startled at the sudden turn in conversation.

“You have so,” Morgana continued in a rage. “Ever since I’ve known you you’ve liked each other and now you’re going to choose a stupid crush over me. Great Gwen, just great.”

“Who put that idea in your head? Morgause? What, that I’m some girl who’ll ditch her friends to go chasing boys? I don’t even like Merlin! We’ve just been friends for ages! You know that Morgana!”

But Morgana was sullenly silent and Gwen, losing hold of the last thread of her patience, hung up on her.

***

Merlin smiled at her encouragingly as she took a seat between him and Elena the next day.

“Hi,” Arthur said from Merlin’s other side. Gwen smiled nervously back.

“I think you and Elena have Maths together,” Merlin said. “Right?”

Elena turned around from where she had been talking to Sefa to smile at Gwen.

“Yes I think so!” she said brightly. “Gwen, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Gwen replied.

Merlin smiled at her as Elena began talking about Mr. Donaghue with Gwen, and then groaning about her poor grades with Sefa and Gwen both.

Seeing Gwen slowly drawn into conversation with the girls, Merlin gave her one last encouraging grin before turning back to talk to Arthur and Gwaine, and Gwen felt a rush of gratitude toward him.

She felt no regret at her decision. Morgana had been wrong about her feelings towards Merlin, but right about one thing; if ever put into that position, with anyone, Gwen would always choose Merlin.

Every time.

Six

“What is it?” Elena and Sefa giggled outside her locker.

“I’m telling you there’s nothing in here!” Gwen sighed.

They merely exchanged conspiratorial looks with each other. Gwen rolled her eyes and opened her locker.

And there it was.

It was simple, nothing ostentatious – a beautiful and clearly expensive box of chocolates, wrapped in delicate gold paper.

Elena and Sefa immediately fell into giggles.

“Alright!” Gwen said, “alright, ok, you were right!”

Gwen sighed heavily. If they were right about the gift they were probably right about who had sent it. It didn’t take them long to start.

“So,” Elena said wickedly. “Do you reckon Uther’ll pay for the wedding?”

Gwen kept largely silent as they teased her about Arthur all the way to class.

Barely a year ago, if an anonymous box of chocolates had shown up in her locker it would have Merlin everyone teased her about; the pair of them would’ve had to isolate themselves from everyone else until the whole thing had blown over, enjoying the additional time together without Arthur or Elena or Gwaine there for a change.

Now, it was Arthur she constantly had to remind people was just her friend; Arthur that made Elena and Sefa fall silent and not-so-subtly scrutinise every time he talked to Gwen.

Of course, nobody could accuse Merlin and Gwen of being anything more than just two people who had grown up together anymore. Merlin had proved that when he started dating Freya.

Gwen swallowed a strangely bitter lump in her throat and tried to focus on the walk to class, though apparently not quickly enough, for she was soon met with the soft bump and quiet “oof!” which meant she had walked into someone.

She looked up to see that it was none other than Arthur himself.

Elena and Sefa stared at him as widely and obviously as if Johnny Depp had somehow materialised in their school. Arthur cast them a puzzled look and Elena let out a shrill giggle she tried to turn into a cough and ran off, dragging a smirking Sefa in tow.

“What was all that about?” Arthur asked Gwen in puzzlement.

“I have no idea,” Gwen replied, inwardly cursing them for the traitorous heathens they were.

“Ah,” Arthur said, looking down at Gwen, and to her horror, Gwen realised she was still holding the chocolates she had received in her locker. Blushing, she hurried to move them to her bag.

“Nice. Chocolates. Who gave you those?” Arthur asked, with a false bravado and exaggerated swagger that meant it could only have been him.

Gwen’s heart froze.

“Um,” she stammered, indecisively. “I don’t.....know.”

“Right,” Arthur said uncertainly.

He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, before pasting a big smile onto his face and asking as casually as possible: “So. Prom coming up. Well. Soon anyway. Soon-ish.”

Gwen felt her heart sink.

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah.”

“You....?”

But at that moment, Gwen’s text alert sounded. Relieved, she cried a little overloud: “Oh! I have to get that!”

Scrambling for her phone, she read the text as quickly as possible, false smile slipping from her face as she took in the contents.

“Who is it?” Arthur asked.

“Merlin,” Gwen said quietly, thinking for a minute. Finally coming to a decision she picked her bag up from the floor and shouldered it saying: “sorry, I have to go.”

“What, now? Class is about to start!”

“Sorry!” she called back.

She turned around and strode off, walking calmly through the hall while the other students were still bustling through the classroom doors and breaking into a run as soon as most students were in class lest she be caught.

She didn’t stop until she reached the boys bathroom at the very back of the building. Hurriedly checking there was no one else in there before she went in, she opened the door and hissed “Merlin!”

“Here,” a miserable voice called from the disabled cubicle at the back.

She opened the door carefully to see him perched on top of the toilet with the lid down.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi,” he replied, with a shadow of his usual smile.

“What happened?”

He heaved a huge sigh.

“I have no idea. I swear, one day, we’re making plans to go to uni together and the next she’s telling me she wants to break up. You know what she’s like, she’s so quiet, she never tells you anything of what’s going on in her head till it all comes out at once. For all I know she’s hated me for months.”

“She hasn’t,” Gwen said gently, walking over to him and pulling him into a hug. “No way. Who could hate you?”

Merlin sighed miserably.

“My girlfriend apparently.”

Gwen stood up, but Merlin remained sitting on the toilet, so she stood next to him and he rested his cheek on her belly, staring morosely at the toilet stall door.

“Did she actually say that?” Gwen asked, absent-mindedly petting his hair.

“No,” he said rather petulantly.

“Then she doesn’t. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out between two people. It must’ve been something else.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe we were all just too social for her. She is pretty quiet. Or maybe she just felt like she wanted to focus more on school and it had nothing to do with you.”

“Yeah?” Merlin asked, a little more hopefully.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling down at him.

“Then how come she didn’t just _tell_ me that? She never _tells_ me anything. I always have to figure stuff out.”

“I know,” Gwen agreed.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the toilet, skipping class and dissecting Merlin’s relationship with Freya, all her faults, and all the reasons he was better off without her, Gwen pretending not to notice he only half-heartedly participated in that part of the conversation.

“Hey,” he said much later, when they were both sitting on the grubby floor of the stall, back up against the wall and legs spread out, staring at their feet as they wrestled for dominance. “Thanks for skipping class to cheer me up and stuff.”

“Of course!” Gwen said. “Anytime Merlin.”

He turned to face her and smiled, and Gwen was suddenly aware of how close they were sitting to each other; their shoulders were rubbing and she could practically feel his breath on her face.

Just as the moment was beginning to stretch into something uncomfortable and electric in equal measure, he quickly turned away, and began rummaging in his bag.

Gwen returned to looking at the stall door, listening to the pounding of her heart and wondering what was wrong with her.

“Gum?” he asked, offering a piece when he’d come up out of his bag.

“No thank you,” she said.

He grinned suddenly.

“Maybe you’d prefer some chocolate.”

She started.

“How do you know about that?!” she asked incredulously.

“Sefa.”

“What?!”

“She already texted me. Think she sent it out to everyone.”

Gwen groaned.

“So who was it from?” Merlin asked, putting a stick of gum in his mouth and chewing.

“I don’t know,” Gwen answered untruthfully.

She didn’t know why she didn’t want to tell him it was Arthur, even though he probably knew anyway, as Arthur’s best friend; she had never kept secrets from him before.

But Arthur’s obvious crush on her made her nervous and excited both at the same time: she wasn’t sure how she felt about him and she didn’t want to examine it too closely. Something was holding her back, though she wasn’t entirely sure what. She had a feeling she probably knew, deep down inside, but she didn’t want to examine that either.

So to head Merlin off before he could start asking about him she stood up and stretched.

“We should probably head out soon. School will be over in about ten minutes, I can’t be caught in the boys toilets.”

“Right,” Merlin said, scrutinising her as though he knew there was something she wasn’t telling him.

He seemed to decide it wasn’t his business however, because he stood up with a groan and then reached out for another hug.

“Thanks again Gwen,” he said into her hair.

“Anytime,” she repeated in a whisper.

***

Prom Fever gripped the school over the next few weeks, becoming the sole topic of every conversation. Girls obsessively described and compared prom dresses and hairstyles, boys feigned disinterest whilst silently going over mental plans to ask their favoured girl and teachers hurried to apply for annual leave before they were assigned supervisor duty on the night.

All of this however went over Gwen’s head. Caught between nursing Merlin’s broken heart back to health after his break up with Freya and both ignoring and appreciating Arthur’s obvious attempts to woo her with gifts and awkward flirting, Gwen didn’t have time to think about the prom until it was rudely brought to her attention by Sefa two weeks out.

“Who are you going with?” she asked Gwen as they walked back to the bus stop from the corner store with chocolates and slurpees after school one day.

“Sorry?”

“To the prom,” Sefa clarified.

“Oh,” Gwen said, suddenly realising she didn’t know. “I’m not sure.”

“What? It’s in two weeks!” Sefa cried, scandalised.

“Mmmm,” Gwen said, unable to muster Sefa’s passion for the topic.

“You know, Arthur doesn’t have a date yet either,” Sefa said watching her shrewdly.

This jolted Gwen out of her reverie immediately.

“What?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sefa said, pointedly. “He seems to be waiting for someone.”

Gwen felt the cold hand of anxiety grip her chest and squeeze.

“Oh?” she asked faintly.

Sefa nodded.

Gwen didn’t say anything while they waited for their respective buses, feelings about Arthur once again thrown into turmoil.

Finally, the bus to Ealdor arrived and getting up to leave, Gwen turned to Sefa and asked hesitantly before getting on it: “What about Merlin? Who’s he going with?”

Sefa frowned at her. “You’d know that better than I would.” 

Gwen chewed her lip and nodded, waving goodbye and then climbing onto the bus. The truth was, she had no idea. Merlin had talked about little but Freya since his break up.

Then an alarming thought flitted through her mind. What if Merlin asked Freya? What if he tried to use the prom as a way of getting back with her? Freya was too shy to say no even if she didn’t want to resume dating him again.

“All right love?” Gwen’s father asked as she walked through the front door.

“Hmmm? Oh yes, fine,” Gwen smiled unfeelingly.

“Sure?” her father asked.

Gwen nodded without saying anything and went up to her room, suddenly confused. Why should it matter if Merlin went with Freya?

 _Because I don’t want him to get back with her,_ she answered immediately.

But why?

Well that was obvious. Because Freya would only be going out of politeness and she would break Merlin’s heart all over again, and Gwen would once more, as the best friend, have to hold his hand through another break up. It was really very irritating. Satisfied by her self-analysis session, she settled in to begin her homework before remembering that Arthur didn’t have a date either, and was very likely waiting to ask her. Unwilling yet to analyse any of the feelings that stirred up, she put it out of her mind and focused on her Chemistry homework.

***

Gwen could not avoid the subject of the prom forever. Now that Sefa had opened her eyes to it, it flitted in and out of her head all day like a moth around a swinging light.

Nor could she avoid the endless discussion of shoes, dresses and partners from everyone in her group, even the boys; apparently Gwaine had hitherto undiscovered passionate opinions about the colour orange, especially on Elena.

And all the while, Arthur looked at her smiling and expectant and Merlin’s gaze skittered between her and Freya like a nervous horse.

How had she never seen it before?

That night, Gwen sat picking miserably at her dinner while her father watched her in concern and Elyan shouted at the football on the television.

Gwen poked unenthusiastically at her mashed potato until the shrill sound of her mobile excused her from dinner.

“Elena,” she answered.

“Ok, can’t beat about the bush any longer,” Elena said without preamble. “Are you going to go to the prom with Arthur?”

Gwen sighed.

“I don’t know.”

“Gwen!!” she shrieked. “It’s less than two weeks away!”

“I know I just....”

“What?”

“I don’t know if....”

Elena’s voice softened.

“Look, you don’t have to date him if you go with him. Just, it’s getting really close and if you don’t let him know soon he’s not going to have anyone to go with.”

“He hasn’t even asked me!”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Elena sighed. “You have to be the bigger man here Gwen. Woman. Whatever. Point is, you’re the one here with the brains. He’s the one with the bum.”

“Elena!”

“Just saying.”

“Fine I’ll think about it,” Gwen said in defeat.

“Good.”

They talked for a few moments longer and Gwen hung up, staring morosely at her phone for a seconds afterwards.

“What is it love?” her father asked from behind her, jolting her out of her thoughts.

“Oh! Nothing. It’s nothing.”

He deposited their plates in the sink and turned around to face her square on. Gwen found herself shrinking under his gaze.

“Tell me,” he said gently.

“I.....I don’t have a prom partner,” she said finally, hanging her head.

“Well you’ll go with Merlin of course,” her father said confidently. “You two have always been best mates.”

To Gwen’s surprise, she felt tears welling up in her eyes. She had no idea why her father’s quiet confidence that she would go to the prom with Merlin should do this to her.

Choking them down her throat, she answered with her head bowed: “It’s not that simple Dad.”

“What’s not simple about it?”

“He.....he might be going with Freya. I mean, I think, I’m not sure, I haven’t asked him. And there’s this other boy....” she didn’t mention Arthur’s name; she didn’t think her father liked him for some reason. “I think he thinks I’m going with him. Or....maybe he doesn’t I don’t know, he hasn’t asked me but I think he wants to and maybe he’s waiting....”

“Gwen,” her father said gently, breaking into her spiel. “If he hasn’t asked you then you don’t have to go with him.”

“I think he’s just being silly.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Gwen’s father said firmly, and Gwen looked up in surprise. “The point is, you don’t owe anything to anyone. I know it seems like it, but that’s because you’re all a bunch of dumb kids, especially you and this boy.”

Gwen laughed in spite of herself.

“Go with Merlin,” he said. “One thing I can say about you both, you’ll always be friends. You’ll never look back on your prom photos and go ‘who was this guy?’ You’ll never regret it.”

Gwen fought to control her breathing.

“So....should I ask him?” she asked finally.

Gwen’s father sighed. “I’ve always thought highly of Merlin but apparently no one’s immune to being a stupid teenager. Yes Gwen, unfortunately, you probably have to ask him.”

Gwen sighed.

“Hey, honey,” Her father said, walking over and grabbing her by the shoulders. “There’s no shame in it. Your mum asked me to the prom you know.”

“Really?” Gwen asked, looking up.

“Of course! Thicker than two bricks I was. I’m sure Merlin is the same. Now go on,” he said, looking at her smiling face, “go over there and sort this out. Come on, I’ll drive you it’s freezing.”

She hugged him. “Thanks Dad.”

“Anytime love.”

***

Gwen leaned back against the headrest of the passenger seat, basking in the warm rush of endorphins that comes with having a pressing problem solved for you.

_Beep Beep!_

“You gonna get that honey?” her father asked, eyes on the road.

She pulled out her phone. It was Arthur.

_Will you go to the prom with me? – A_

Gwen’s rush of good feeling was immediately replaced by anxiety and guilt and one tiny warm feeling she supposed was flattery, even through all the worry.

“Who is it?” her father asked.

She didn’t honestly know what Merlin’s plans for the prom were, or what she’d do if he’d asked Freya already. She didn’t want to let Arthur down, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

She looked to her father. It was now or never.

 _I’m sorry,_ she typed, _I already said I’d go with Merlin._

Heart pounding, she pressed send and waited.

 _That’s ok,_ came the reply, _I thought you might want to go with him anyway. Just heard you weren’t and thought I’d ask_ _J_

Gwen breathed out in shaky relief. He hadn’t asked because he’d assumed she’d want to go with Merlin! He’d been waiting to hear whether they were going together or not before he asked.

Feeling suddenly warm towards Arthur for his understanding, she smiled and turned to her Dad.

“It’s ok,” she said. “It was that boy. He asked but I said I was going with Merlin and he said it was cool.”

“Good,” her Dad said. “Glad it all worked out.”

Gwen felt a renewed jolt of panic at these words. What if it didn’t? What if she’d risked everything with Arthur and Merlin was already going with someone else?  What if the person Arthur had heard Merlin wasn’t going to the prom with her from was Merlin himself? How was it no one knew if Merlin had a date yet? And what on earth did she mean, risking everything with Arthur?

Head in turmoil, she unbuckled her seatbelt as her father pulled up to the curb.

“Good luck kiddo,” he said, as she got out of the car.

“Thanks Dad.”

She waved her father goodbye.

She walked in the front door without knocking, taking her welcome for granted after over ten years of doing the same thing.

She stopped outside the kitchen. Merlin was sitting at the kitchen table looking anxious, and his mother was standing next to him resting her hand on a cup of tea next to him saying: “ – think you know what you really want love.”

Merlin nodded and then looked up and saw Gwen. His face lit up.

“Gwen!”

“Hi,” she said awkwardly.

Hunith smiled at her and left the kitchen through the other door, leaving Merlin and Gwen alone together.

“Um,” they both said at the same time, and then laughed.

“Do you –“

“Do you –“

“Sorry,” Gwen said in a whisper, face burning and veins pumping anxiety like fire around her body.

“It’s ok,” Merlin said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll go first.”

Gwen waited, heart pounding.

“Gwen,” he said solemnly. “Do you want go to the prom with me?”

“Oh yes!” she cried, rushing over and flinging her arms around him and nearly knocking Merlin off his chair.

“Sorry!” she cried.

“Umph,” he replied, and she realised that she was still squashing his face into her shoulder, and pulled back sharply, blushing.

“Sorry,” she repeated.

“That’s ok,” he replied, looking at her softly.

Gwen was suddenly aware of how very close to Merlin she was; standing over him in the chair, she was practically invading his personal space. And yet, it had never mattered to her before why did it matter now? She awkwardly took a step back and he just as awkwardly got up out his chair.

They stood there motionlessly for a few seconds before he said: “Do you wanna make chocolate chip biccies?”

She stared at him. “What for?”

“Dunno, just feel like eating cookie dough,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Gwen smiled. “Yeah alright.”

They began pulling ingredients out of the fridge, flicking each other appraising glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking and smiling blushingly when they were caught.

“That’s everything,” Gwen said, joining Merlin by the mixing bowl and putting the butter down on the counter.

Merlin smiled down at her, and she felt her face heat and turned away.

“Cool let’s go.”

They mixed all the ingredients together in silence, though when it came time to lick the spoon there was something of a scuffle.

“You have the spoon! I get the bowl!” Merlin said, laughing as he wrenched it from her.

“You idiot aren’t you eating all the mix raw anyway? _I_ get the spoon _and_ the bowl!”

Merlin laughed at held it over it head, so she jumped at him, trying to pull his arm down, but she landed awkwardly and had to grab him around the waist to steady herself.

“Sorry,” she gasped, looking up, to see him looking down at her with equal shock.

They stood there staring at each other, Gwen lost in the electricity of her own body for a few seconds, and then his face started to come down....

_Beep beep!_

Gwen cursed her mobile, and Merlin turned away at the noise.

“Your phone?” he asked awkwardly, and Gwen, bright red and lips pressed together tightly, nodded.

“Um, I’m closer, I’ll just....I’ll just get it....”

He stretched over to the Gwen’s bag by the floor and pulled it out. Gwen’s phone was one of those that showed the beginning of each text message on the screen. Merlin’s face went bloodless as he looked at it.

“What is it?” she asked, “is everything alright?”

He jerked.

“Fine,” he said, “it’s all fine. Here.”

He handed it to her.

_Hey Gwen I know you’re going to the prom with Merlin, but I know you guys are just really good friends so I was wondering, sorry to sound like a tosser but do you wanna go to the movies or something with me sometime?_

-      _A_

Gwen felt the world around her melt into silence.

“Well?” Merlin asked, surprising her as he read it over her shoulder. “What are you gonna say?”

“Oh,” Gwen said, unspeakably nervous. “Um....”

She didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, she did like Arthur; he was very nice and handsome and if not for....something else....she would almost certainly have gone to the prom with him.

On the other, she knew she wanted something else, but despite the moment the text had interrupted, could simply not bring herself to admit what it was; it would disrupt something that had been too much of a fixture of what felt like her entire life.

“Um.....”

Merlin took her silence as assent.

“You should go out with him,” he said, voice a little higher than normal, breaking off a huge chunk of cookie dough and cramming into his mouth. “I mean, I know he likes you, and he’s a great guy and all. Why not?”

She looked at him.

“Merlin...” she pleaded softly, hoping he would say it.

But Merlin was on a roll.

“I mean,” he said, taking another huge bite of the dough. “It’s not like we like each other or anything is it?”

Gwen’s heart sank.

“No,” she said. “No we don’t. We’re definitely just friends.”

“Right,” he agreed, putting the mixing bowl with the rest of the cookie dough in the sink and turning on the tap, apparently not noticing most of the mix was still in there.

“Well,” Gwen said after a few minutes of awkward silence on her part and increasingly moody silence on Merlin’s. “I better....go home...”

“Yeah,” Merlin agreed, now doing the washing up. “What colour dress you wearing?”

“What?”

“So I know what colour tie to get. For the prom.”

“Oh,” she said, tears glittering her eyes against her will: she’d thought they’d go shopping for his outfit together. “Purple.”

“Right.”

“Yeah,” she stood there again for another few seconds, and then not seeing any point in continuing, said “well, bye.”

“Bye!” Merlin replied.

Gwen saw herself to the door, and hugged her coat tight to herself once she stepped outside, trying not to cry.

She gathered herself for a few minutes, before straightening up, wiping her nose on her sleeve and pulling out her phone to ask Arthur when he would like to see a film with her. If she was going to date him, she was going to make the best of it. After all, he was a nice guy, and she and Merlin didn’t like each other.

They had always been just friends.

 

And The One Time They Did

To Gwen’s surprise in retrospect, the rest of Sixth Form passed in an easy blur.

She and Merlin didn’t speak for a few days after the night they agreed to go to the prom together, but after he rang her up to ask if it would _really_ make a difference if his tie wasn’t an _exact_ match for her dress, they picked up again as though nothing had ever happened.

Neither ever spoke of that night by mutual agreement, and if Merlin was a little over-hearty in his support of her relationship with Arthur in its early days, she pretended not to notice.

For going out with Arthur wasn’t at all like she had imagined.

She had known Arthur for about two years by then, and though she had never been one of his best friends (that honour was Merlin’s) she had still thought she knew just about everything about him.

But she was wrong. Where Arthur could be loud and a little crude around his mates he was always gentle and considerate with her; where he could talk football non-stop with the best of them in front of Gwaine and Lance he always switched it off to accommodate whatever she wanted to watch when she came over; and where he put on something of a defensive act with Morgana (whom Gwen saw very little of these days, save for visiting Arthur) he was open and somewhat vulnerable with her.

Against all her own predictions, she began falling for him.

She found she had less and less time for Merlin once she began dating Arthur, but with the tension of that night unresolved and unspoken between them, Gwen didn’t really mind.

Things with Merlin were an unsettling mix of completely normal and oddly tense. For the first few months of Gwen and Arthur’s relationship he wavered disconcertingly between normal, sad and so happy it was a little strange.

But if there was a problem, it was an Unnamed One they were never to discuss, for Merlin seemed determined to spend as much time as possible proving how obviously content with he was.

He masterminded a project with Gwaine to egg the house of the universally hated school principle, Mr. Kilgarrah.

He took over the gap in conversation left by Arthur (now usually talking with Gwen) and became louder and more dominant in lunchtime discussions.

He surprised everyone by being caught snogging with Sefa in the janitor’s closet three weeks after his funeral; they were quickly the talk of the school, though their relationship didn’t last longer than a four week fling.

He was even polite to Morgana, when he saw her in the hallways, breaking their mutual agreement to pretend the other did not exist, or, if forced to acknowledge the other’s existence, be as rude as possible.

But after the end of his fling with Sefa, apparently feeling his point had been made, he stopped almost everything he’d begun in the last few months; he did not, for example participate in any more schemes of Gwaine’s nor did he acknowledge Morgana in any way when he saw her in the halls.

Instead, after that, he began spending more and more of his lunchtimes dragging Lance away from the rest of the group, the two of them going to their lockers and not returning, and Gwen didn’t see as much of him as she was used to for the rest of the school year.

***

In the spirit of rushing toward the end that had dominated the second half of the year, graduation was upon them in the blink of an eye.

Gwaine mooned everyone the moment he accepted his diploma; Lance duxed the school for almost every subject he took. Morgana surprised them all by jumping down from the stage and running into the arms of Morgause and kissing her passionately. The school went silent for a moment until Gwaine wolf-whistled and they all laughed.

Arthur accepted his diploma with a smile for Gwen, which made both Merlin and Morgana roll their eyes in unison from where they were each sitting on opposite sides of the hall (the first time they had agreed on anything since Merlin, Gwen and Lance stopped hanging out with her).

Finally it was time to stand together outside the gates of Camelot High in the wind and rain for the last time, crying and hugging each other and promising to always be friends.

“Merlin!” Gwen cried, finally freeing herself of Elena’s grasp and Arthur’s attention.

To her surprise, he ran over and swept her up in a hug that lifted her off her feet, twirling her through the air.

She laughed in delight at the unexpected act.

“We’ll keep in touch right?” he asked urgently, finally putting her down. “I mean, I know we haven’t been....hanging out as much lately cause of school and stuff,” he said delicately, “and our universities are on other sides of the county but we’ll still call all the time and stuff?”

“Of course we will,” she said fiercely, grabbing him. “Of course. I promise.”

He grinned at her, until he was buffeted away by Lance and Gwaine and she by Arthur and they were broken from each other’s sight.

***

They broke their promise.

It happened gradually.

At first they called every week, swapping stories of their respective universities and degrees.

Gwen was studying Arts, taking a course in just about everything and hoping she would find one that spoke to her that she could choose as a major for second year. Merlin was doing the same thing with Science, at a university in Edinburgh.

She told him about her new roommate, a quiet, polite but generally scruffy man named Leon, and he told her about his, a shy man named Daegol.

But after a time, they began to drift. They each became quickly swamped with uni work, and often had to put off their phone calls because of last minute assignments.

And of course, Gwen was still putting aside a lot of time for Arthur – he was attending the same university as her, the University of Albion.

She thought this might bother Merlin the way it had in secondary school, but Merlin was flourishing in his new environment, making new friends named Gilli and Nimueh and mature-age student called Alator, while she was still with most of their secondary school friends at UA.

They spoke less and less, going from once a week (which would have been a scandalous lack of contact in their school years anyway) to once a fortnight, and finally to once a month.

Gwen was upset about it, but didn’t want to face the fact that she and Merlin might not be as close, so she convinced herself this was just a phase and distracted herself with work and Arthur.

Soon, first year was ended, summer holidays arrived and Merlin returned home for three months.

But despite being once more only a few blocks from each other, they didn’t see one another much that holidays.

Compared to their usual standard, Gwen had called Merlin very little during the second half of first year and she now felt self-conscious every time she picked up the phone – had they drifted? Was it weird if she called him now?

There had been all that never-to-be-spoken-of awkwardness between them in the last six months of sixth form and they hadn’t spent much time together first year uni – she felt issues had been too long unresolved to assume everything was still the same between them. Was she even still his best friend?

She usually put the phone down and spent the rest of the day hoping he’d call her.

He never did.

She tried to put it down to his feeling the same way, but every time she convinced herself of this she thought: ‘ _What if it’s cause he’s just too busy hanging out with Lance or Gwaine or something?’_ and messaged Elena or Sefa over facebook to spend time with them instead.

***

Autumn arrived and Merlin once more left for Scotland.

Second year bloomed bright with possibilities; the only mar on the horizon her continuing anxiety over her friendship with Merlin, which she put firmly out of her mind.

Gwen had decided on a psychology major, while Arthur, to everyone’s surprise, chose politics.

At first things continued between them the way they always had; nights that should have been spent working on assessment spent cuddling instead.

But slowly but surely, for no discernible reason, Gwen found herself growing bored of his company. She used to delight in little things, like the particular tone of his voice when speaking during a movie or his unexpectedly dry wit when it came without sarcasm.

But lately, she found she just couldn’t muster the enjoyment these little things used to bring. Again and again she found herself asking: “Who is Arthur Pendragon? Why did I fall in love with him? What does he do for me?”

Distressed because she still cared for him, she returned home from Albion for the weekend to speak to her father.

“Ah Gwen love,” he said knowledgeably, resting his elbows on the kitchen bench. “It’s that infatuation love that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well there’s two types of love isn’t there? You’ve got your feeling of what everyone calls love, that lasts for about two years or so, where everything they do gives you that heady rush, then you’ve got that slower, deeper, longer lasting love, which was built on friendship, and maybe it gave you that rush at the start, but friendship was its foundation and you don’t find yourself with nothing to say once that ‘rush’ feeling runs out.”

He looked at her stricken face.

“Oh love,” he said pityingly, holding his arms out, and she ran into them, feeling as she always did like a little girl again. “It happens to everyone.”

Gwen still cared for Arthur, so she valiantly stuck it out for another few months in spite of her father’s advice, until one day, halfway through the year, when Arthur had been moodier and more sullen than usual, he turned to her on the main lawn of UA and said with a certain finality: “Gwen.”

Relief and sadness swamped through her at once, both vying for dominance. Gwen’s eyes glittered, but she didn’t patronise Arthur by pretending she didn’t know what he was going to say.

“Arthur,” she replied. “I.....there’s nothing wrong with you. I mean, I didn’t mean to say that....not that there’s anything wrong with you....just....”

Arthur looked at her stammering and smiled.

“Yeah I know what you mean,” he said, pulling her down for a hug. “It’s not that I dislike you or anything either. I mean...”

Gwen laughed.

“Can we still be friends?” she asked.

“Of course,” he replied, and though Gwen’s heart rejoiced, a traitorous part of her despaired, for she knew she hadn’t really been close friends with him before they were dating, at least not in the way she had been friends with Merlin, and it was unlikely they would become so now – she would never hang out with him again the way that she did now.

And so, just as she had lost Merlin in first year, so she lost Arthur in second.

***

Third year was a year of pain, loneliness and discovery for Gwen.

She and Arthur did remain friends, though just as that tiny, bleak but honest portion of her soul predicted, never in the way that she had once been friends with Merlin.

She was only just beginning to accept how much she had lost in those eighteen months of her life, when she had allowed her relationship with Arthur and self-consciousness and awkwardness over their refusal to talk about the Unnamed Issue let her and Merlin  drift apart.

For she could see now, with maturity and hindsight, the Unnamed Issue for what it really was.

  
She had liked him, and he had liked her, but too scared to admit it, she had gone out with Arthur. She had known he was hurting for the rest of that year, and too afraid to tackle the issue, had allowed them to drift instead.

Now, almost two years later, she only ever got the occasional text or phone call from him, and it hurt, it hurt like a dull ache only partially suppressed with painkillers until even they run out and the full reality of the pain makes itself forcefully known.

Unable and unwilling to deny or distract herself from it anymore, Gwen missed her old friendship with Merlin so much she ached with it, all the time.

She cried herself to sleep whenever Leon was out and she had the chance, until one day there were no more tears to cry, and she looking inside herself there was only an unhappy but resigned acceptance of the situation, and a vow never to let it happen again with anyone else.

She carried out the rest of the year with determined studiousness and finished with top marks, enough to pull her GPA up to qualify for masters, to her great surprise.

She rang her father who was delighted by the news and promised to find a way to pay for her continuing education; she was the first person in her family ever to have gone to university (Elyan having become a mechanic) and the whole family shared in her excitement for post-graduate work and the possibility of becoming a practising psychologist.

It wasn’t the last surprise the year had left for her. Three days out from her final exam, whilst studying in the library she received a text from Merlin;

 _Gwen!!! Just got confirmed. I’m doing masters with a professor at your uni next year! So I’ll be coming to UA_ _J_ _Wanna meet up on the hols and tell me all about it?_

Gwen could hardly breathe for excitement.

 _How come you comin to UA?_ she texted, then scolded herself for being an idiot and asking that first instead of confirming lunch or something.

_Wanted to work with top professor in my field, he works at UA, Gaius something-too-hard-to-spell. Anyway, he’s accepted me_

Gwen giggled.

 _How long till you back for hols?_ she asked

 _Last exam in a week,_ he replied.

_So catch up at the pub not next Tuesday the Tuesday after?_

His reply wasn’t immediate. Gwen kept checking and re-checking her phone, earning her annoyed glances from one of the girls at the table opposite.

She knew she was being paranoid. He was probably doing other more important things or talking to someone or would text back later. But they barely talked these days, and she wanted to think that this was as important to him as it was to her, and eventually she couldn’t resist the temptation to pull her phone out and place it on the table, waiting for it to sound the text alert.

She didn’t have long to wait.

_Beep beep!_

_Sorry for the late reply, Mum called. Two Tuesdays away sounds fine._

Gwen’s body flooded with relief and excitement, and when she saw the registered time between texts on her phone, she laughed out loud at how stupid she and Merlin were once again.

It had only been three minutes.

***

Two weeks later she sat nursing a beer and watching Gwaine, Percival and Lance play snooker at The Great Dragon, a pub in Camelot, waiting for Merlin to arrive.

She steadfastly ignored the swirling flurry of rain that entered the door behind each new patron, focused as she was on sipping her awful beer (really, who had ever granted Will a job behind the bar? She’d seen him each chalk as a child with her own eyes) until a particularly loud bang and familiarly colourful curse drew her attention and her breath caught a little in her throat.

“Merlin!” she called out, watching him turn and his face brighten as he spotted her.

After he had run the gauntlet of Gwaine, Percival, Lance and Will behind the bar he came over with a pint of beer.

“Rookie error,” Gwen said, as soon as he had sat down, quite forgetting to start with hello and how are you.

“What?” he asked confused.

“The beer. It’s terrible. Will’s clearly swapped the normal stuff out for his home brew.”

“No way,” Merlin said, immediately intrigued. “He can’t do that.”

“I’m telling you, if you follow that tap it’d lead to a bathtub full of beer out the back.”

Merlin laughed.

“He can’t he looks like he’s already cooking meth out there.”

“In the cellar then,” Gwen said and they were off, laughing as they joked about Will’s fictitious meth business (they decided he was selling to Old Man Simmons, who led a secret double life as the head of a bikie gang) and tried to guess where in the pub his home brew was located.

It was as though any nervousness or anxiety about the situation had been cried out with her tears over him; there was only relief they were together and a bubble of happy nostalgia expanding in her chest as conversation moved to reminiscences about Will in primary school and primary school in general.

“Enough about stuff from a million years ago though,” Merlin said, draining the last of his beer and, to Gwen’s disbelief, ordering another. “How was your final year of uni?”

“Yeah,” Gwen said, smiling fading a little. “It was good. I told you I broke up with Arthur?”

“Yeah,” Merlin said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Gwen said, fiddling with her glass. “It wasn’t really working out.”

They were silent for a little bit, until Merlin burst out with: “I’m sorry!”

“What for?” Gwen asked confused.

“Not really....not really being there for you, through that. Or....or Arthur too, I don’t know. I fell out touch with you guys and I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Gwen said. “Oh no, Merlin, it’s fine, don’t worry about it...”

“No,” Merlin said, shaking his head. “It’s not fine. I’m sorry.”

He sighed and raised his eyes to hers. “I really missed you Gwen.”

Gwen felt a blush rise delicately to her cheeks.

“You know, you were always my best friend,” he started. “And we said we’d be together no matter what, remember back when I had that fight with Morgana? But I was a totally stupid moody git at the end of secondary school and then I let us start to drift apart and then....and then, I dunno, I stopped calling you as much as I used to so then I started to feel awkard doing it at all, just in case – I don’t even know what I was nervous about...”

Gwen laughed because that was exactly how she had felt too.

“But then I realised this year that I’d been a complete twat so when I was looking for supervisors to do my post-grad with, I checked out University of Albion just in case and there was Gaius so...”

Gwen felt her heart swelling at his admission that he’d basically applied to her university to mend their friendship.

“Merlin,” she said, feeling a little teary. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

 “For, I dunno, being the bigger man and doing something about it....about us. Or me, sorry....cause, I really missed you too. But, I didn’t think to...I thought maybe it was too late or....thank you,” she finished in a whisper.

She had never been very good at putting her feelings into words; she was too honest and straightforward to say anything without stammering or being too blunt and she didn’t think tonight’s effort was any better than her usual standard but, as usual, Merlin understood.

“That’s alright,” he smiled, and then, because neither liked to dwell too long on sentimentality: “Wanna join Gwaine and Perce and Lance in their snooker game?”

“Sure,” she agreed. “Anything to rescue you from the rest of that beer.”

Merlin laughed and they both stood up, but before they moved over to the other side of the pub, Merlin pulled Gwen into a hug.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Never again yeah?”

“Never,” Gwen sniffed into his shoulder.

They parted and Merlin gave her a few moments to collect herself before they headed over to the boys by the pool table.

After that, things got a little messy. Gwaine bought them all a round of beer to celebrate Merlin and Gwen’s return home from uni, and Gwen decided the beer was greatly improved by tipsiness.

They split into teams,Gwen and Percival roundly thrashing Merlin and Gwaine while Lance talked to Will at the bar. They commandeered the jukebox and danced and drank until Gwaine started to harass Will for not having Kendrick Lamar’s _Swimming Pools_ on it and they all decided it was time to leave.

“So hang out again tomorrow?” Merlin asked, staggering outside with a small smile on his face.

“Sure!” Gwen said, happiness filling her as air into a balloon. “Just go to your house tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m only helping Mum out with some weeding or something but after that we can chill,” Merlin with a smile.

“Great,” Gwen said, fully content for the first time in years.

***

Gwen arrived earlier than expected, unable to wait until the afternoon to see Merlin again when things went so well between the previous night.

“Hey!” he said, answering the door in an old t-shirt and jeans with dirt (inexplicably) in his eyebrows. “Sorry, I’m still helping Mum...”

“That’s alright, maybe I could join in?”

“Well sure, if you really want to. Think there’s another pair of gloves or something under the sink, hang on...”

She followed him to the kitchen and then to the vegetable patch outside that had been the source of all the tomatoes and beans she had ever eaten as a child, where Hunith was currently crouching on her knees in an old wide brimmed hat.

“Hello Gwen!” she said, warm and welcoming as ever.

“Hey Hunith,” she replied.

“I just had Merlin weeding that bit over there by the pumpkins if you want to join in,” Hunith said, almost toppling over as she half sat up to gesture over to it.

Merlin and Gwen crouched in the dirt, Gwen fumbling with her gloves and hat while Merlin smirked at her.

“Oh shut up, how’d you even get dirt in your eyebrows anyway?” she asked in response to his silent mockery, laughing as he wiped even more soil onto his face in an effort to scrub it out.

They giggled together rather uselessly in the garden for awhile, throwing clods of dirt and earthworms at each other until Hunith asked them to make themselves useful or go prepare lunch instead.

Shamefacedly they applied themselves to the task of weeding after that, or at least Merlin did; Gwen was thrown off guard by the way the task highlighted something about Merlin she hadn’t fully appreciated in the dark of the pub last night – he’d bulked up over the last year.

He must’ve felt her eyes on him because he turned around and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Joined a gym at uni?” she asked him as casually as she could, mentally kicking herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

“Oh,” Merlin wriggled a little uncomfortably, “yeah, they were doing this $10 membership deal if you voted for this one party in the student union elections.”

“What??” She asked with an incredulous laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, they needed to, they were Tories obviously. Gutted me to do it but then I figured, no one else is voting for them so me and Gili just decided to take advantage of the membership.”

“Needed to impress a girl or something?” she asked, somewhat nervous of the answer.

He hesitated, then put his trowel down and turned around fully to face her. “I think I thought I liked my friend Nimueh for a little bit, but I didn’t, not really, and you know, nothing ever happened with her, which was definitely for the best.”

“Oh,” Gwen said, not really sure how to feel about this.

Merlin shifted his weight on the balls of his feet a little before announcing: “Wanna go inside and make Mum some lemonade?”

“Oh!” Gwen had quite forgotten Hunith, who was determinedly weeding the tomato patch at the opposite end of the garden, face and ears turned firmly away.

“Yeah but you know,” Merlin flashed an uncertain grin. “We’ll have to make it first.”

Gwen smiled deviously.

“Just like we used to when we thought we were going to start a lemonade shop for that little bit when we were nine?”

Merlin’s grin became genuine.

“You haven’t forgotten how?”

“As if!” she laughed, throwing her gardening gloves onto the ground.

They returned to Hunith an hour later, covered in juice and sugar with only one glass of lemonade to show for their efforts, the years not having improved their lemonade making skills.

Later, after they made dinner (a surprisingly impressive lasagne from Merlin, for which he credited his friend Daegol) they sat passing a bottle of wine between them at the kitchen table, swapping increasingly tipsy stories of their roommates during undergraduate.

“I’m _telling_ you, Leon was _way_ worse than Daegol!”

“How do you figure that?” Merlin asked, putting the bottle down and smacking his lips (they’d decided glasses were simply too much washing up).

“He was ginger from the back!”

Merlin sniggered.

“But that wasn’t even the worst of it! The worst bit was, _he wasn’t ginger at the front._ So it was like this....like you were _constantly_ looking at it, second guessing yourself, is he really ginger? Did I imagine it? Am I rooming with a ginger??”

“ _And –“_ she went on, reaching for the bottle, “when you were drunk, _oh god._ The worst one was Gwaine. He’d come up to visit me and Arthur on the weekends at UA, and we’d all be in the student bar, and he’d just be there _poking_ Leon in the head, going ‘nah tell us mate. Tell us. Tell us mate. You’re ginger aren’t you?’”

Merlin’s giggles turned into outright guffaws.

“So there’s no way,” Gwen continued, laughing, “that you can tell me Daegol ever induced an existential crisis like that.”

Merlin laughed until he was reduced to sniffles, and he had to stop to wipe the tears of laughter from his eyes.

“That is _so_ Gwaine,” he said finally. “But I bet he wasn’t even ginger. You can’t be ginger at the back and not at the front.”

“I’m telling you he was!”

“Yeah but you were always crap at colours,” he said indulgently. “You’ve always had trouble telling blue from purple.”

“ _I’m_ crap – who even taught you how to make purple?? Remember when we were little, and we were doing that hand painting thing at after school care and your handprint thing was all brown and I had to tell you how to mix the paints so they made actual colours?”

“Hey yeah,” he said reminiscently.

Suddenly he straightened in his seat. “Hey Gwen - let’s go to an art gallery.”

“What?”

“Yeah why not,” he said. “Wanna go to London or something tomorrow? I’ve hardly been there and I’m nearly 22. Let’s start, I dunno, living a little.”

She gazed smilingly at him, at his face infused with the light of idealism, and was surprised to discover that she both missed and adored this face; the face he wore when talking about big ideas about Living and how that involved Art Galleries and Culture that they Needed to Get Into Their Lives.

 _Maybe it needed some time away from to fully appreciate,_ she thought wonderingly.

“So do you want to?” he asked and with a start she realised she’d been staring at him with her head on her hand for the past few moments.

“Oh! Yeah ok, sounds cool. Tomorrow? What time?”

“We’ll have to leave early,” he said thoughtfully. “Wanna stay over tonight?”

“What will I wear?” she asked.

“Just wear that again, I’ll wash it or something, I don’t mind, and it’s only me. It looks nice on you,” he finished with a slight blush, and Gwen felt her face grow warm.

“This is just that daggy purple shirt I got before I left for uni,” she said to cover the moment.

Merlin laughed.

“It’s blue,” he said.

“It’s _purple!”_

***

Gwen had a whirlwind time in London the following day. They rose early, caught the train to London and went to the art gallery, where they spent most of the day alternately appreciating the art and holding whispered arguments over whose colour vision was worse.

They rounded it out with an extended meal in a cafe opposite, where they ordered a slice of all the homemade cakes on the menu and refused to leave until they had eaten their way through them all, well past dark.

They caught the train back and Merlin offered to walk her to her house from the station; Gwen accepted, though the walk was largely silent, and strangely charged.

“Well,” he said when they got to her door. “See you soon?”

“Yeah,” she replied.

He made an awkward gesture as though to hug her but stepped back at the last moment so that her nose grazed his chest, reminding her of a similarly awkward hug when Chris had physically pushed her into him in Year Six.

“I’m sorry!” she gaped, quickly righting herself and giggling.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Merlin said, keeping his head down and laughing exactly as he had ten years before. She wondered if he was blushing this time too.

“Um, well, see ya!”

“Bye!”

She stood outside for several minutes, the warmth in her chest buffering her against the slightly chilly breeze.

***

Merlin texted her the day after the next, complaining of boredom, so she met him at the pub and they sang karaoke while Sefa and Elena, who were also there, booed them enthusiastically and pretended to hurl bottles at the stage.

The day after that Merlin learned of a flower show in the neighbouring village. Declaring that every girl needed to see a flower show once in her life, he dragged Gwen along despite her lack of interest.

Once there he presented her with a flower he surreptitiously stole from one of the displays, and solemnly informed her it was definitely purple, not blue, which earned him a smack on the arm.

Nevertheless, Gwen put the flower in her hair while he was distracted with an excited puppy that had come over to introduce itself against the will of its master. She rather thought it the perfect crime, until she saw him at the end of the day, looking at the top of her plait with a soft expression in his eyes, but she didn’t say anything about it so neither did he.

They continued on in this fashion for a number of weeks, spending almost every day together, until one night over dinner her father remarked: “You’re going on a lot of dates with Merlin.”

“They’re not dates,” she stilling her efforts to crack pepper over her steak.

Her father shrugged. “They just sort of seem that way. Art galleries and flower shows and movies and ice creams and all that.”

“We just didn’t spend a lot of time together in uni and now we’re making up for it,” she replied.

“I remember love,” her father said softly. “I remember you telling me you cried about it, a lot.”

Gwen nodded quickly, unwilling to revisit those painful, Merlin-less years.

“But everything’s fine again now,” she reassured him.

“I know,” he said, concentrating on cutting his meat. “Seems sort of more than fine.”

Gwen blushed.

***

It was coming up to the end of the holidays, and her blissful period of three months with Merlin.

Ballroom dancing lessons were being held in the school hall of Ealdor Primary, three days out from the date Merlin and Gwen had to leave to begin their Masters.

Merlin of course suggested they attend as something to do, despite the fact that it would almost certainly be exclusively peopled by geriatrics.

They stood by the side of the hall patiently listening as the instructor, a fifty year old woman with closely cropped hair and a severe expression explained the finer details of a waltz.

“Why are we here again?” Gwen asked.

“We’re expanding our horizons. We’re learning new and different things no one else in our generation will know.”

“That’s because no one needs to know them anymore.”

“Come on Gwen its cause its fun,” Merlin said with a smile.

But Gwen’s father’s words of the night before returned to her mind and once lodged there they could not be removed.

_It’s a date._

Gwen’s breathing became shallower.

“Now everyone find a partner and we’ll practise!!” called the instructor.

“My lady,” Merlin said with a cheeky grin, bowing low and offering his hand to her.

Gwen smiled as she gave it to him and he led to the middle of the hall, along with everyone else.

“Hands!”

Merlin and Gwen joined the appropriate hands, a jolt passing through Gwen’s body at the contact.

“Ladies place your hand on your partner’s shoulder, men your hands on her waist please!”

Merlin’s gaze locked onto Gwen’s and didn’t let go, as he guided her hand to his shoulder and then lightly placed his on her waist.

“And! One two three, one two three...”

They shuffled awkwardly around the hall, Gwen’s face burning and her eyes on the floor, though whenever she looked up, Merlin’s gaze was as serious and steady as ever.

_You’ve been going on a lot of dates with Merlin._

Was that was this was? She felt that way. She wasn’t in secondary school any longer and there was no point to denying it – looking at Merlin’s intense gaze, feeling the heat of it on her, she knew she wanted this to be a date. She wanted him.

But did he feel that way? How could she ask? They’d only just found each other again, and he had slipped so far back into her heart she couldn’t bear a second estrangement if she was wrong.

Lost in her thoughts she failed to notice where her feet were moving and suddenly she tripped over him, jolting them momentarily out of position.

“Sorry, sorry....”

Merlin hurried to rearrange their bodies as they were before, and suddenly, jolted out of her mental spiral of questioning by the physical bump, she saw him plainly as perhaps self-doubt had never allowed her to before.

He was blushing. He was anxious. He was nervous about putting his hands on her but rushed to do it all the same, as though he couldn’t bear to lose the opportunity to do so.

“Merlin,” she said suddenly, courage rushing her on before her sleeping fear could raise its head again and ruin things the way it had the night they had asked each other to the Prom, “is this a date?”

He looked up startled.

“I mean....it doesn’t have to be...”

He stared at her for a few moments before finally saying, “Gwen, hanging out with you with these past few weeks....they haven’t been... _dates_ really, more just....a better version of how we used to be.”

“Oh,” Gwen said numbly, feeling pain and humiliation rise in her like a tide. “Sorry.”

She dropped her gaze before he could see her tears, but he put a finger under her chin and lifted her head up.

“No, sorry, I said that wrong,” he said. “How we used to be was....was me liking you and....not being brave enough to tell you.”

She met his gaze in a mixture of hope and disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a rush. “I fucked everything up. Back when we asked each other to the prom, that night I wanted to tell you....but then Arthur texted you and I was such a cowardly _idiot_ Gwen, I’m sorry. And then I was just rotten to you for the rest of the year, I was so jealous, and I tried to get over it in uni by making all these new friends and trying to get into Nimueh but it didn’t really work. And then one day I just realised all I’d done was push you away and we were barely even friends anymore and it was all my fault, cause I couldn’t admit to myself what everyone who ever knew us said all along.”

He took a deep breath.

“You deserved this years ago, but I’ll admit it now. All the kids who ever teased us ever since we were little were right. I liked you then and I.....I still like you now.”

Gwen suddenly realised that somewhere during the waltzing their positions had changed. They were no longer standing the designated foot apart, but close together; his hand was no longer on her wait but on the small of her back pressing her to him, and in that moment, their closeness and his confession, Gwen’s whole world narrowed to him and him alone.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Me too I….I like you too. I always did.”

They stopped moving altogether, simply holding each other as he stared down at her.

“Really?” he whispered.

“Really,” she said a smile beginning on her face. “And um, those other kids were right about something else too. Well they had the right idea about something else.”

“What’s that?” he asked softly, leaning his face slowly down to hers.

“Merlin and Gwen, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-“

But before she could finish, his lips closed on hers and Gwen knew completion at last.

  
Epilogue

“Merlin!!” she called from where she was stirring a pot of pasta sauce. “You know you have about ten minutes till Arthur and Mithian get here?”

“Yeah!” his voice came faintly from the back room. “Just let me finish writing this sentence!”

Gwen rolled her eyes. He really hadn’t changed much since his university days – he _still_ left all his work to the last possible minute.

“Mum!” Rosie asked, tugging on her skirt.

“Mmm?” she asked absent-mindedly.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t have time Rosie dear, I’ve got to watch this dinner. Why don’t you go ask your brother?”

“But he doesn’t know either!”

Gwen sighed and moved the pot from the hotplate to the other side of the stove.

“Now what is it?” she asked looking down.

Rosie held up a very old piece of paper, and at once, Gwen’s mind flooded with memories while her heart rushed with happiness and nostalgia.

“Oh,” she said softly. “Where did you find that?”

“In the office, in Dad’s trunk of papers and stuff.”

“Does he know you’ve been going through his things?”

“No,” Rosie answered completely unabashed.

Gwen sighed. She had probably destroyed any semblance of order in Merlin’s trunk but she could hardly blame Rosie, she’d been telling him to get a filing cabinet for years.

“So what is it?”

“Well,” Gwen said, a smile coming to her face, “that’s a picture that me and your father drew, when we first met when we were about your age. See that’s me, and that’s your dad, and there’s Grandpa and Uncle Elyan on one side and Nan on the other.”

“Did you always know you were going to get married then?” Rosie asked.

Gwen smiled.

“Yes love I think we did.”

_The End_

_The author makes no apologies for the unashamedly sappy ending_


End file.
